Teen slang/hip-hop lingo in the mainstream

[Paul McFedries]

"Bling-bling" is defined in the Shorter Oxford as "(the wearing of)
expensive designer clothing and flashy jewellery." If I were to define this
term, I'd put the "flashy jewellery" first because the wearing of oodles of
gaudy rings, necklaces, and other expensive trinkets is central to the
meaning of bling-bling, much more so than "expensive designer clothing."

Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 11:37 AM
Subject: Re: Teen slang/hip-hop lingo in the mainstream


> At 11:01 AM -0500 3/31/03, Paul McFedries wrote:
> >I'm researching the use of either teen slang or hip-hop lingo in
mainstream
> >contexts such as ads, marketing materials, political speeches, business
> >correspondence, news articles, op-ed pieces, etc. Examples include last
> >year's CNN memo requesting that crawl writers use hip-hop slang terms
such
> >as "ill" and "bling-bling," the Budweiser "whassup" ads, and AOL's "phat
> >sounds to fat pipes" promotion.
> >
> Not to offer a particularly useful response, but could you fill me in
> on the meaning of "bling-bling" in hip-hop lingo?  A colleague from
> Brown has been sending me their extremely elaborate and eloquent spam
> diagnosis headers, and one of them (appearing with the scan of the
> spam ads for how to increase one's penile dimensions, if memory
> serves) has "bling-bling" as part of the critique.
>
> larry
>